Kombucha is a fermented tea, it is carbonated, flavoured any way you desire or unflavoured and is a delicious probiotic rich alternative to fizzy drinks, I liken it to a Champagne Style Iced Tea. I drink it in the evenings when I could also happily be guzzling a beer/wine.

The SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria and Yeasts) can look quite frightening at first! However it is quite amazing – starting with a large jar of cold sweetened tea, you place in the SCOBY – a rubbery yellow coloured chunk – then over a week or so an opaque film grows over the top of your cold sweet tea forming a new SCOBY the diameter of your glass. To grow, the SCOBY eats the sugar releasing carbon dioxide which makes the drink fizzy. The good bacteria is imparted into the tea and after some time you bottle the liquid (without the SCOBY). Bottling the liquid allows you to add flavour and after a week or so in the bottle the Carbon Dioxide cant escape you have a lovely fizzy bottle of Kombucha

To start fermenting Kombucha here is my guide, honestly, this can be a trickier ferment to get right, its easy to do but you can end up with a vinegar or a drink that is too sweet and not fizzy. As ever, I advise you just to start, you cant go wrong, you’ll enjoy the journey and there are other uses if it is too vinegary and you can make a flat Kombucha fizzy again. Once you get the hang of your environment, temperature and fermentation time including your preferred flavours it will be plain sailing! I would buy a bottle, online or from a health food store if you’ve never tried it so you know what you are trying to replicate.